Re: [Usability] GNOME3: Handling/Opening Documents (Website for Contributing Ideas?)

[Turing Test <turingt gmail com>]

On 26/04/05, Daniele Levorato <daniele levorato infocamere it> wrote:
> the logic to apply for versioning: I'm editing a document and how would you
> save the various "versions": every time I make a change? every 5 minutes

Creating versions wouldn´t be automatic. Only saving user data.
Provide an explicit command for the user to decide when a new version is needed.


> if changed? And how many versions would you store? and what if an
> intermediate version is really "wrong" or inconsistent (so saving it is
> useless) ... and if I changed the document without being aware of it
> ("save before exit" dialog no longer apply to warn me) and I really
> didn't mind change the document? ... and if I changed too much the
> document and I decide that I want to save it with another name: are you
> sure there're no situations where "save as" would be usefull?

All those problems have an easy solution: replace "save" and "save as"
with the "make version" and "make copy" commands. The same
functionality of saving documents is available. The main and only
difference is that the user doesn´t need to care about temporary edits
being lost if the application crashes or is closed before saving.
Reversion to a previous "checkpoint" is still possible, even without
an "undo" command for every application.

 
> Too many questions to say that "automatic saving" really helps the user
> instead of making things apparently simplier but really more difficult
> to manage.

This solution is easier. The management is exactly the same if you
need it, but you can ignore it if you don´t need it.


> Perhaps "saving" is this situation... perhaps not and can be really
> semplified... I don't know now... but I have a feeling: it's better to
> explicitly save and I would like to have control over it, decide
> when/where/how many times and how to do it.

The concept of "save" is totally replaced with "make a new version".
You have the same control, and the extra benefit of having all created
versions available, instead of only the last one.